What is Decaf Coffee?

     I hear a lot of coffee purists looking down on decaf coffee.  I argue that you must really be a coffee lover if you drink decaf.  After all, if you need a coffee fix so badly but are concerned about it keeping you up late, you must really love the stuff to make a cup of decaf to get you through.Often, I find myself working late in a hotel room, and it just seems natural to me to have a coffee while I work.  When it happens, I make myself a cup of decaf.  Wow, by my own logic, I must really be a coffee lover if I'm not drinking decaf, but I'm drinking hotel room decaf![ad#Google Adsense - use me]My brother and I were having this conversation, and he asked me how exactly coffee is decaffeinated.  Here is the layman's explanation...Caffeine is a stimulant found in the coffee bean itself, the seed of the coffee cherry.  Decaffeination is the "artificial" process of removing that caffeine from the bean.  Caffeine is removed from the coffee before it is roasted, while in its green stage.  In general, a solvent is used while the coffee beans are being steamed or otherwise heated, to remove the caffeine without removing other essential chemicals.  These other chemicals include anything else natural to coffee, that contributes to its taste and aroma.  To wipe all such chemicals from the coffee could potentially produce a flavorless and scentless coffee bean.  This is the heart of decaffeination: removing the caffeine while allowing the rest of the coffee to still be, well, coffee.  The solvent (along with the caffeine) is rinsed from the coffee beans.  When they're roasted, you get decaffeinated coffee ready to grind and brew.This process is repeated up to a dozen times before the coffee bean is considered decaffeinated.Want to learn more?  Trust in good ole Wikipedia to read about the different individual methods of decaffeination.For the record, it is virtually impossible to remove 100% of caffeine from coffee.  For this reason, the FDA (and international standards) allows the term "decaffeinated" to be used to describe the best effort to remove all caffeine.  The truth is that 1-2% of the caffeine remains in the coffee after the decaffeination process, but this is so negligible as to be unnoticeable and virtually untraceable.